As I prepare the largest post I’ve ever published on the SWLing Post—a review and comparison of the PL-660, PL-880, ATS-909X and ICF-SW7600GR–I’ve been listening to the music I recorded Sunday night on ERT Open (Voice of Greece).
Regular readers know that I’ve always had a particular fondness of this station. Some nights they play hour long sets of music ranging from folk to modern (I especially love the folk) on 9,420 kHz. Their signal booms into North America as well; indeed, ERT Open can even be heard on a basic shortwave portable with relative ease.
Since I don’t speak or understand the Greek language, I can listen to this music while writing posts and catching up on email correspondence (I’m terribly behind at the moment).
For your listening pleasure: two hours, six minutes of ERT Open recorded on July 6, 2014 staring around 01:00 UTC.
Click here to download the recording as an MP3, or simply listen via the embedded player below:
If you’re interested in the benchmark portable radio review I mentioned above, check back on the SWLing Post later today.
Hi. Not really. There were two jingles, the traditional jingle of “Elliniki Radiofonia” (Greek Radio) with the flute of the sheppard and the bells of the sheep. The second jingle is the one by “2nd Program, ERT Open). Earlier one can hear the “1st Program” as well.
The Voice of Greece was the name of the “5th Program”, i.e. the one that assembled time-shifted news shows from the 1st Program, music from the 2nd Program and included some own speech content and news addressed to the Greek diaspora.
After the official closure of ERT, June 11 2013, the shortwave transmitter plugged into the 1st Program. Between November and December, there was no content produced by the Athens employees, due to their eviction from the Radio House, so the shortwave transmitter plugged into the Radio Station of Macedonia, for about one month. In December they hired their own studios across the street and resumed broadcasting the 1st Program on the shortwave, which also relayed the 2nd program (particularly during the night when there is no live news content). There is still the 3rd program via web and another 13 local stations, 4 of them on mediumwave. All these are produced by around 600 people among 2000 who were fired last year but occupied the abandoned equipment and continue to broadcast.
Since the leased lines that connect the Avlida transmitter have been cut, we assume that the signal arrives via web-streaming.
Hi. It is not the radio station of Macedonia any more. The frequency is controlled again by the former ERT employees, who have formed ERT Open. According to the jingle at 58:30 the shortwave transmitter is relaying “ERT Open, 2nd Program”
Many thanks for the tip! I have edited the title of the post to reflect ERT Open. This is where my lack of Greek language skills fails me! Do you ever hear them refer to the station still as the Voice of Greece? I must assume not.
-Thomas
I *think* the former ERT stations are also streaming live at the website http://www.ertopen.com/radio .Not sure which is ERT 3 (perhaps the link labeled, in English, “Third Schedule”…